One chemistry unit down (only two weeks late! I rule!), one to go. The one I just finished had a lot of heady conceptual visualization for fourth graders. ("Everyone put on your 'nanovision goggles' and imagine what's happening with the molecules.") The one I will start revising tomorrow actually has 'splodey things. Okay, it's only somewhat ( Read more... )

We were asked to remove a picture of hot dogs from one of our books because hot dogs contain nitrates which are Bad for Children.

I can think of a much better reason we shouldn't show fourth graders a picture of hot dogs, but whatever.

Can you find the Very Bad Idea in this sentence from one of our teacher's guides?

You may want to assign students to take the temperature of a variety of things or places, such as: the classroom, a cup of cold water, a cup of hot water, an ice cube, their own body, the inside of a refrigerator, the inside of a freezer, the inside of an oven, etc.I ( Read more... )

I just realized that the concept map that I came up with in order to explain energy transformation to kids -- which I thought was such a great idea -- is in the shape of a pentagram.

Do you think our publisher will think that's a problem?

This month's winning ridiculous comment from the Paranoid Publisher ( Read more... )

Things have calmed down considerably with the Paranoid Publishing Company. We finally agreed that they would have the last word on safety issues, but that all things in the category of weird/icky/gross would be our domain. I'm not sure exactly how this all played out, but this agreement ultimately resulted in the picture of the stapler, the peanut ( Read more... )

Since you all were so horrified/entertained by my last post about our publisher and their paranoia, here's another example that I came across today ( Read more... )

There are a number of factors that determine what children learn in school. There are state and national standards in all subjects. There is a large body of educational research that suggests what children should learn. There is conventional wisdom and there are social norms. There are district-wide and school-wide expectations, standards, ( Read more... )